Minefield: The Art of Mona Ryder panel discussion

Join us for a panel discussion with exhibition artist Mona Ryder, Director QUT Galleries and Museums Vanessa Van Ooyen, visual artist and educator Dr Rachael Haynes and writer Dr Victoria Garnons-Williams on the practice of seminal Queensland artist Mona Ryder.

Queensland-based artist and QUT alumnus Mona Ryder has been a significant figure in the Australian art scene since the 1980s, known for her evocative and subversive works. Described as ‘dangerous’, ‘raucous’ and ‘darkly tragic’, her work often appropriates household objects to create bold sculptural assemblages. Incorporating unique materials and emotionally charged imagery, her practice explores themes such as domestic agitation, gender roles, memory, and social and political structures.

Ryder’s work is held in collections throughout Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, and she has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Biennale of Sydney. This exhibition will survey Ryder’s prolific output that spans almost five decades. It is the first Queensland survey of the artist’s work since UQ Art Museum’s exhibition in 1984.

Dr. Victoria Garnons-Williams is a former Senior Lecturer in Visual Arts within the Creative industries, Education and Social Justice Faculty at Queensland University of Technology.

Her career highlights include a 2002 lecture tour of New Zealand for the Beeby Foundation and the New Zealand Ministry of Arts. In 2005, she directed the Australian Institute of Art Education conference in Cairns, Queensland and in 2014, she convened the Photography & Fictions Conference for the Queensland Festival of Photography and edited the accompanying refereed publication. In 2015, she addressed Fast Forward: Women in Photography Symposium at the invitation of the Tate Modern, London and in 2019, she presented a paper on Photomedia Education at the InSEA International conference Making in Vancouver, Canada.

Victoria’s publications include research done on the Colonial photographs of J.W. Lindt, 2 monographs, Renata Buziak: Afterimage (2010), and Fred Hunt (2014), published by the Queensland Centre for Photography, and in 2020, The Last Laugh, an article on Australian Indigenous Women photographers in Photography and Culture. Victoria’s exhibitions include hand-applied silver gelatin images (4 Sisters, 1994; Wake, 2003; Silver Gelatine, 2014), digital images (Landscape Painting, 2005; Only You, 2014 and Knowing Wink in Rites of Passage, 2019).

Dr Rachael Haynes is a contemporary artist and educator who lives and works in Australia. Rachael’s art practice engages with feminist archives, collective agency and care ethics by examining the social and personal constructs of language and gender. Rachael completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Visual Arts (2009) with the support of an Australian Postgraduate Award for research at the Queensland University of Technology and is now a Senior Lecturer at QUT.

Image credit: Mona RYDER Garden of heavenly delights 1989, watercolour on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

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